Nico Hulkenberg’s Barcelona Grand Prix ended in unusual fashion after gravel or a stone thrown up by Liam Lawson’s car at Turn 12 struck the emergency kill switch on Hulkenberg’s Audi and shut the engine down. Hulkenberg said Lawson had run wide while the pair were fighting for ninth place, and that debris from the gravel strike triggered the switch and left the car to coast to a stop. The retirement came on lap 28.

Hulkenberg said the car “totally switched off” and that he had never experienced anything like it in his career. He was able to limp back to the pits, but the car would not restart. Audi later said gravel hit both the fire extinguisher and the ERS kill switch, causing the sudden loss of power. Hulkenberg’s mechanics initially treated it as a routine pit stop and changed his tires before the problem was identified.

The incident denied Hulkenberg what would have been his first points finish of the 2026 season. After the race he remained 19th in the standings for Audi. Lawson said he did not know his mistake had caused Hulkenberg’s retirement and called the situation “so unfortunate.” Audi racing director Allan McNish said the failure was a frustrating end to a strong weekend for Hulkenberg.

Jak Crawford will make his second Formula 1 free practice outing of the season for Aston Martin at the Austrian Grand Prix, driving Lance Stroll’s AMR26 in FP1 at the Red Bull Ring. The session will be his fourth overall FP1 appearance for the team and Aston Martin’s second of four mandatory rookie practice runs required this year.

Crawford first raced for Aston Martin in FP1 at Suzuka earlier in 2026, and the team has also used him in place of Fernando Alonso after Alonso arrived late following the birth of his first child. He arrived in Austria after completing a Pirelli tyre test with Aston Martin in Barcelona, and the team said he has accumulated more than 3,800 kilometers in Formula 1 machinery.

Aston Martin trackside officer Mike Krack said the run will help evaluate Crawford’s progress in a live race-weekend environment and give the team more data for development. Crawford said he knows the Austrian circuit well, having driven there before in Formula 2 and Formula 3, and said he hopes to provide useful feedback.

Red Bull’s significant upgrade package for the Austrian Grand Prix is unlikely to be enough on its own to close the performance gap to Mercedes and Ferrari, team principal Laurent Mekies said, as the team continues to chase roughly four tenths of a second per lap. Mekies pointed to Ferrari’s Barcelona upgrade as an example of how much performance can still be unlocked through development in Formula 1’s 2026 rules era.

Mekies said Red Bull has been making gradual progress since Japan and believes Mercedes’ early-season advantage is starting to fade, but he said the team still needs further steps after Austria. He said the package will be judged on the lap time it produces on track, not on expectations, and rejected the idea that Red Bull is in no man’s land, saying it is still competing with the top four teams. Red Bull arrives at the Red Bull Ring still dealing with balance and grip issues and is described as having the fourth-best car under the current rules.

The Austria upgrade will be Red Bull’s second major update of the season after Miami, when it introduced a new sidepod design and a rotary rear wing concept. The team is focused on chassis-side gains because it did not receive power-unit upgrade tokens, and the Austrian package may also help reduce weight, with Red Bull still believed to be above the 768kg minimum. In Spain, Mekies said the team’s best realistic result before late retirements would have been to beat one Ferrari and one McLaren, while Max Verstappen finished fourth after the race changed late on.

Carlos Sainz is weighing his future at Williams after the team’s difficult start to the 2026 F1 season, with delayed winter development and an overweight car leaving it short of pace. Team principal James Vowles believes Williams can become competitive with F1’s top teams by 2028, and Sainz says that target is realistic, but he is still deciding whether he wants to wait that long to win again.

Speaking in Monaco, Sainz said he remains committed to helping Williams recover, though podium contention this year looks unlikely. He said he will have to make a decision about his future later this season. Former F1 winner David Coulthard said Sainz is likely assessing his options as Williams goes through its slump, with market speculation also continuing around both of the team’s drivers.

Ralf Schumacher said Max Verstappen rejected a Red Bull offer that would have kept him with the team through the end of the 2032 F1 season. Schumacher said Verstappen told Red Bull he is already under contract through 2028 and wanted to “wait and see” before agreeing to a longer extension. He said the meeting took place in Austria and suggested Verstappen’s hesitation reflected uncertainty about Red Bull’s ability to keep producing a championship-winning car. Schumacher also said Oscar Piastri could become relevant to Red Bull’s plans.

Verstappen’s future is also tied to a release clause in his current deal, which his agent Raymond Vermeulen confirmed exists. Reports differ on the trigger: one says it could activate if Verstappen is outside the top two at the summer break, while another says it would run from August to October with the same top-two condition. One report said Verstappen is seventh in the standings and 60 points behind second place with four races left before the deadline, and he has one podium in the first seven rounds of 2026, a third place in Canada. Mercedes also made an approach, but Verstappen rejected it immediately because the offer was not considered strong enough.

Vermeulen said Verstappen and Red Bull remain loyal to each other for now and that a decision could come before the summer break. He said the aim is to reach clarity soon, while reports also say Verstappen has declined to publicly commit to Red Bull for 2027. Red Bull is reported to be weighing ways to keep him, including a low double-digit-million payment to remove the exit clause and, in another rumor, a possible controlling stake in Racing Bulls. That ownership idea has been linked to FIA scrutiny of dual-ownership rules, though Joe Saward described it as unlikely. Saward said he expects Verstappen to stay with Red Bull at least through 2027, with engineer Gianpiero Lambiase expected to move to McLaren around that time.

Aston Martin endured a miserable weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, with both cars retiring after a race that underlined the team’s poor pace and reliability. The team qualified on the back row and was more than three seconds off the pace in Q1. Lance Stroll retired on lap 5 after losing third and fourth gears, and the team told him to stop to avoid further gearbox damage. Fernando Alonso started from the pit lane after adding power unit elements to his pool, ran a longer stint, battled Cadillac’s Sergio Pérez, then retired after a battery failure and stopped on the grass after his pit stop.

Chief trackside officer Mike Krack apologized directly to fans after the double DNF, saying he was sorry for supporters in green shirts and disappointed the team could not give them anything to celebrate. He said Aston Martin had expected a difficult event, but not one as severe as Barcelona, and said the team lacked both reliability and performance. Krack added that the lack of progress was weighing on everyone and that morale was hard to keep up while rivals continued to improve.

Aston Martin is now relying on a major upgrade package that is expected around the Belgian Grand Prix in mid-July, or later in the season around the summer break. The team chose to hold back smaller updates in favor of the larger rollout, with changes expected on both the chassis and power unit side. Alonso said the team needed to stay united and keep hoping for gains in the second half of the season, while noting that the upgrades still have to prove they can make the car faster. Aston Martin remained in Barcelona this week for a Pirelli tire test, with reserve driver Jak Crawford taking part alongside Ferrari and Cadillac.

Ferrari introduced a major eight-component aerodynamic upgrade package to its SF-26 at the Barcelona Grand Prix aimed at boosting performance and closing the gap to Mercedes. The package was the largest of any team at the weekend and represented a broad aerodynamic revision rather than a single targeted tweak.

The upgrades centered on an evolved front wing and a redesigned nose with a raised lower surface, and included a revised footplate with different vane placement plus a new dive plane on the endplate. Ferrari also revised the floor, diffuser and sidepods as part of the set. The team said the changes were intended to improve aerodynamic load distribution, cut turbulence over the front tyres, increase downforce and make the car easier to balance by managing airflow, reducing wake and directing cleaner flow to the rear.

Ferrari introduced the package at Barcelona after an encouraging performance in Monaco and as a follow-up to a previous development step at the Miami Grand Prix in early May, which had not stopped Mercedes maintaining an early-season advantage. Barcelona was treated as an important development benchmark because its mix of low, medium and high-speed corners and the weekend’s three practice sessions on a permanent circuit allowed teams to compare new parts. Several other teams also brought updates, including Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren, Williams, Racing Bulls, Haas and Cadillac. Lewis Hamilton said, “Ferrari’s innovation has been encouraging.”

Formula 1 has appointed Fever as its new ticketing operator in a five-year partnership beginning in 2027, giving Fever responsibility for a revamped global ticketing platform designed to modernize how fans search for, buy and manage tickets. The new system will launch with the 2027 season and run through 2031 on Formula 1’s website and digital channels.

F1 said the platform will cover general admission tickets, venue-specific hospitality and the series-wide Paddock Club. Chief commercial officer Emily Prazer said the deal is intended to make the consumer journey more seamless and improve the fan experience, and F1 said the overhaul reflects a renewed focus on digital ticketing infrastructure as its global audience continues to grow. F1 also said only a small portion of its supporters will ever attend races in person.

The move ends Platinium Group’s run as F1’s ticketing operator after more than a decade and marks the first major ticketing operator change for the series in more than ten years. Fever said the agreement expands its presence in racing and builds on existing work with Formula 1, including its involvement at the Spanish Grand Prix and a separate agreement tied to Ifema Madrid through 2035. Fever also works with E1, SailGP and LIV Golf.